Footlights

Published: May 16, 2001

NEWS

Men Around Town

There's a new clown in town, and he wants to see the sights. Who better to lead the way than his urban cousin in ''Clown Around Town,'' a new production to open the Big Apple Circus's 23rd season. A zany celebration of city life, the tale is a loose adaptation of Aesop's ''City Mouse and the Country Mouse.'' The show will make its debut on Saturday under the Big Top Tent at Cunningham Park in Queens, where it will run through May 28 before moving to the C. W. Post campus of Long Island University.

Time Travel

It's an armchair traveler's delight. ''Voyages: A Smithsonian Libraries Exhibition,'' opening today at the Grolier Club, 47 East 60th Street, has some 100 books and sheet-music selections charting more than 500 years in the evolution of discovery in three categories: ''Journeys Over Land and Sea,'' with reports about people, animals, plants and unknown lands; ''Journeys of the Mind,'' with essays on botany, zoology, chemistry and physics; and ''Journeys of the Imagination,'' with works by architects, designers and artists. Highlights include Pliny the Elder's first-century ''Naturalis Historia'' (printed in 1582), the most thorough geographical, biological and cultural treatise known from the ancient world.

Major Works

On Sunday at 2 p.m., Mischa Santora will conduct the New York Youth Symphony in a season finale including Beethoven's Fifth Piano Concerto, featuring John Browning in his first appearance at Carnegie Hall since 1995. Mahler's First Symphony and the premiere of Stefan Freund's ''No Apologies'' will complete the program.

Memory and Music

Despite the success of ''Carmina Burana,'' the music of Carl Orff has long been under a cloud because of its popularity in Nazi Germany. Indeed, Orff's political allegiance during World War II has never been resolved, although he never joined the Nazi party. Tonight at Avery Fisher Hall, Leon Botstein will lead the American Symphony Orchestra, with the Bavarian Radio Chorus, in the composer's ''Catulli Carmina'' (1943) and ''Trionfo di Afrodite'' (1953), which were written during and shortly after World War II. Also tonight, across the river at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Zdenek Macal, will perform Orff's masterly ''Carmina Burana,'' featuring the Pro Arte Chorale. The work will also be presented on Friday and Sunday at the center in Newark, tomorrow at the State Theater in New Brunswick and Saturday at the War Memorial in Trenton.